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No one plans to get divorced. But it does happen... and when it does, the understandable emotional upheaval can make it hard to focus on dealing with practical matters.

And that's too bad, because when your marriage ends you should immediately take steps to ensure your interests are protected -- and your estate plan reflects your new marital status.

What should you change? In two words, almost everything.

Once your divorce is final – meaning the divorce decree has been approved and a judgment rendered – as a start you should review and revise, if necessary, the following legal and estate planning documents:

Trusts

Powers of Attorney (property, healthcare, HIPAA, etc)

Will (if you have one)

Life insurance policies

Retirement accounts

What happens if you don’t make changes to the above?

As one example, say your ex-spouse remains the beneficiary of your life insurance policy and you pass away. In that case the proceeds will go to your ex-spouse instead of, say, to your children. That may be what you intend – but then again, it probably is not.

Quick note: What happens if you don’t have a valid Will in place? Since after a divorce an ex-spouse is no longer legally considered to be an heir, he or she will not be in line to receive anything from your estate. (Yet another reason why we don’t consider a Will to be a useful estate planning tool.)

Or take retirement accounts. After a divorce you may revise your Will to reflect your desire that your 401(k) goes to your children -- but if your wife remains the beneficiary of the plan, she will receive those funds. Retirement plan designations trump estate plan stipulations. The same is true for life insurance; proceeds will go to the named beneficiaries of those policies and not to persons named in a Will or other estate plan document.

Just keep in mind one important fact, though: as you make changes to estate planning documents, be sure those changes are in line with the terms of your divorce decree. A divorce judgment is legally binding. If as a part of your divorce you agreed that your ex-spouse would remain the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, don’t change the beneficiary designation on the policy itself -- otherwise you’ll create a mess for your heirs to untangle if you happen to pass away while the policy is in force.